Galina Zudenkova (Mannheim): Political Cronyism. Welcome to the Real Space Age: A launching pad in the New Mexico desert for rocket planes will send you into space for $200,000 — it opens later this year. Alejandro Chafuen reviewsThink Tanks in America by Thomas Medvetz. Maggie Koerth-Baker on why science needs silly-sounding research. For well over a decade now the United States has been “a nation at war”, but does that war have a name? Good wars, bad wars: A panel on WWII and Vietnam with Dale Maharidge, author of Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War, and Nick Turse, author of Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. Matt von Hippel on earning a PhD by studying N=4 super Yang-Mills, a theory that we know is wrong. Alex Nalbach reviewsThe Telegraph in America, 1832-1920 by David Hochfelder.